#crazy how stella was laughing the whole episode about stolas trying to contact octavia and keeping the phone away from her

[fizzyrodeo]

i reaaaallly hope octavia's hypocrisy is reserved early on in the third season, because stella isn't even secretive about how little she cares about her family, ESPECIALLY not in sinsmas. as little sense as it makes that stolas would be the one to push octavia past the point of blind parental trust, i can deal with it so long as we see stella getting her just desserts as well.

[pruneunfair]

Let's talk about a villainess from another genre of media: Stella

Stella is a lot more complicated compared to villainesses I talked about in the past. Mostly because those characters were from manhwa that were easy to pick apart and seperate into well written and bad written. However similarly to characters like Rashta and Marianne, Stella isn't agreed by the entire fandom to be awful. She's a character people either really love or really hate.

I watched Helluva Boss since it still had 6 episodes and it was more focused on the assassinations instead of drama, and Stella was always a character that stood out because she seemed like the most one-note. Everyone else had at least one other trait that made them actual people but Stella was always just the crazy wife who trys to kill Stolas over him cheating. (Even as a child, they show her strangling two dogs)

If you take away the whole trying to kill her husband part though, Stella was very reasonable. I mean she was cheated on and humiliated at her own tea party in front of her friends, I'd be mad too.

BUT I was also not against Stella becoming a villain. I think she's pretty funny as one with her absolute Diva attitude. There were early signs that she was more upset about the fact that Stolas cheated with an Imp rather then the fact that he cheated at all, and in general was hyped up to be one of those prissy rich villain's.

that being said though, after watching Sinsmas, I'm not too sure if Vivzie is looking to actually make Stella an interesting villain and is instead using her as a straw man to distract people from criticizing what is obviously her favorite ship.

There were tons of opportunities for Stella that could vastly improve her character. For some examples that don't make her a villian. I once saw a fan comic that released around the time Ozzies was released and it was basically about Stella stealing Stolas's eyeliner as revenge and then lounging at a hotel or an apartment swirling some wine. Petty but still amusing, didn't make her a full blown antagonist and it also had a little scene that showed her love for her daughter.

If they really wanted to keep Stella as a villain then they could at least do it better. Something I really liked at the end of mastermind was during the scene where Octavia is trying to run after her dad after seeing him on trial on TV, Stella shows up appearing sympathetic and hugs her crying daughter while smirking. I thought that was a pretty good way of showing how parents purposely keeping their children away from the other parent to get some sort of control out of it.

Then in Sinsmas she isn't even trying to be subtle about it and just laughs obnoxiously with her brother about Stolas trying and failing to contact Octavia RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER. Like... if they wanted to make this scene feel like the last one, couldn't Stella have changed both her and Octavias phone numbers and then lie that she told Stolas when she didn't so she could further gaslight Octavia into thinking that her dad must've abandoned her for another man?

Sinsmas also tries to make it look more justified by using some random homophobic demon to bitch and complain about her ex husband leaving her for another man. I see what they were probably trying to go for but if I'm being honest.. it seemed more like a cheap attempt to get Stella fans to shut up.

So with both the fact that her backstory has yet to be revealed along with the writing quality of the series, theres a lot of people who defend Stella and even make backstories for her to explain why she is the way she is. Usually through headcanons and straight up giving her the Beatrice Horseman treatment. The only downside of this part of the fandom that I noticed is that they justify ALL of Stella's behavior with no form of critical thinking.

For me, I'm on a middle ground with Stella. I don't mind that she became a villain but I don't think Vivzie is really all that interested in making something interesting out of her like she does with all her previous villains. Like I said, I think Stella is just a bunch of moral scapegoating at this point. Something awful to distract you from the fact that Stolitz was getting pretty toxic as a ship.